I've been a professional graphic artist for just over 40 years and work for a large company. I bought a few models here some months ago because it was much quicker than making them myself. I also bought a few for personal use in Studio from Daz3D. While the models initially looked great, they turned out to be a huge problem when converting them for use. The requirement to have a Chinese language pack is complete bullshit. One can only download it if you have Win7 pro or ultimate, it's NOT available as a standalone installer. My company (and many others) keeps our production computers OFFLINE. I also do this at home for both security, stability and speed. If your file requires this, then you should make it available on your site...the actual file, NOT just a link to Microsoft (links constantly change). Better yet, convert the file names to English. This site is in English after all. Having a bunch of Chinese names makes me think that this stuff is being produced in some Asian sweatshop somewhere. Fix this NOW!
Site search function. What trunk monkey programmed the site's search function? No matter what I search for, I get tons of non-related items. It also misses a LOT of related items. I believe that the problem is primarily caused by artists not using proper keywords. The lack of English proficiency shows up here. If the file names are in Chinese, then I guess they won't be able to include English keywords will they?
Better and more varied images of the rendered file. Most show only one render, leaving potential customers (like me) wondering what the entire file includes. An overall (top down) perspective shot would be perfect.
How about making a more universal format as standard? Autodesk is losing customers due to it's subscription pricing scam. Our entire studio moved to Blender after Autodesk demanded several G's a year to keep using it. We told them to screw off and converted all our files to collada and obj before 3DSMax's license expired. (We still maintain a hacked copy 'just in case', but we know you won't tell anyone...right?).
Speaking of formats, I'd like to suggest that artists look at also providing their items in the 'duf' format for use in 'Studio' from Daz3D. Studio has steamrollered Poser (you all remember Poser right?) and is now wildly popular among the amateur 'load-pose-render' crowd. While there's tons of figures and accessories, there's darn few architectural items. There's so many great (beautiful, ornate, fancy) interiors here at such reasonable prices that I'm sure they'd sell well. It would only take a quick conversion and some easy texturing (Iray renderer). There's only two artists making architecture for Studio and they charge a lot. Their output is also pretty low.
Bob
I don't know what to make of this post. None of what you state I find an issue as a buyer and a seller.
Never seen this Chinese stuff your on about. I've never heard of Daz3D in my life, and the search system finds me exactly what I want 80-90% of the time. duf file formats, another new thing to me, and I've been working in 3D for a long time haha.
The wishlist issue, I cannot backup or deny, as I've never used that feature.
And yea, Screw Autodesk for that.
Cgtrader does not sell models, it only provides platform for artists or companies to sell their products. Any issues you have with the files, should be addressed directly to the sellers.
As for search issues, i tend to agree with you - search engine clearly isn't strongest part of this marketplace.
Wishlist can be accessed through user menu - most top right icon on every page here.
Your always welcome to do suggestions for improving this website but if people get impression this website is less good then others then think again.
One can always go to places like turbosquit and pay 30 to 50% more for same models, this place only takes 20% from the artist compared to 60% on the other, you can compare that with autodesk versus blender situation, this is then like the blender of the selling platforms and the others are in autodesk mode asking steep prices for their same old services.
I think there is way more incentive for artists to invest in this platform/community and make CGtrader the main point of focus, allot of 3D artists already do so and are channeling traffic from their social media to here and building a strong foundation/position here, that's why this place is growing so fast and maybe a bit to fast and disordered at times.
Just take a look at this line here (https://www.similarweb.com/website/cgtrader.com#overview), if that line keeps going like that it will pas 6 million user/month within 5 months.
Allot of artist (including me) also sell on other websites but + the added additional cost those places take (maybe they curating more?), they may or may not be more user friendly given that extra price, up to you to make that balance.
Anyways, never hurts to look on those other websites then simply drag and drop a presentation image of an item in google images and see if same item is available here for better price.
In order to post an answer, you need to sign in.
